


Alive (I'm buried in water and earth)

by ineedsomecyanide



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (just a bit), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 22:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedsomecyanide/pseuds/ineedsomecyanide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"But the Seine was cruel, and she had spat him out, his sacrifice did not calm her troubled waters, and he had found himself on the bank, dripping wet, hurting madly, in a hell far worse than that which awaited him beyond the river."</i>
</p>
<p>Javert's suicide attempt fails, and he has to confront his consciousness, and his nemesis.</p>
<p>Valvert, if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alive (I'm buried in water and earth)

**Author's Note:**

> There aren't enough words to thank allthestarsinthefirmament for the proofreading she did on my work. Thank you thank you thank you.

_As_   _a boy, he_   _was_   _taught_   _he_   _was_   _the_   _bad_   _one_    
_One_   _that_   _could_   _heed_   _the_   _other_ _, the_   _protector_    
_He_   _will_   _walk_ _, he_   _will_   _walk_ _, he_   _will_   _walk_   _into_   _the_   _river_  

  * _Winter_   _Windows,_  Sea Wolf  



He walked as the damned walk, as souls from the depths of hell walk, and maybe he was one of them. He was dripping water and left a trail of wet footprints behind him. The footprints shone with the light of the moon and his hair, stuck to his face, hid his frown. Everything of that man - that ghost - reeked of death.  
He was limping, and blood joined the Seine’s putrid water on the pavement. He cursed Fate, God, Satan, and all of mankind under his breath. Yet, no one paid attention to that dark figure, nobody would have been surprised if the devil himself would have walked the streets of Paris that night; so many young lives had been lost.  
A few hours ago, the Seine had called to him like a siren‘s song. He had longed for the embrace of the dark waters to shelter him from the destruction of everything he had believed in, that a convict was a convict, that a saint was a saint, that the Law would have always smiled at him, and that, acting in her name, he would always have been just. Knowing that there were forces different from the Law and equally powerful drove him to desperation, he realised that everything he had believed in and everything he had fought for his whole life did not make sense. What was better, if not to end that senseless existence?

But the Seine was cruel, and she had spat him out, his sacrifice did not calm her troubled waters, and he had found himself on the bank, dripping wet, hurting madly, in a hell far worse than that which awaited him beyond the river.

He had had to deny his birth... did he love his mother? He did, whether it a blessing or a curse. She had taught him to read stars, his guides, which kept watch in the night, which were always the same, always distant. Now the sky was dark, there were no stars, or maybe they were still there, but his eyes couldn’t perceive them.

Maybe he was finally dying; the wounds from the fall killing him. Maybe his mad flight had not been so useless and the death he coveted was slowly taking him.

The stars and the whole world faded into darkness.

 

Heart-wrenching screams awoke him. He was astonished at the knowledge that those cries weren’t his. He was in a strange bed, he heard other people presence: breaths, cough fits, sobs, unintelligible words and the screams which had awoken him. A hospital. A too crowded hospital because of the events of the previous night. An angel, dressed as a bystander, had taken pity on his body and brought him there; they did so without fearing the fact the he was already a ghost, a shadow. The doctors, who were too busy with the people wounded during the riots to fuss over a man who failed even in taking his own life, had dulled his mind with laudanum and left him with the less urgent patients, hoping that he wouldn’t suffer too much. Someone had tended to his broken ribs and his wounded arms and legs.

When he suddenly got up his numb limbs didn’t protest as he had had feared. He ran away as for as long as he could, hitting and stumbling over the makeshift beds that crowded the hospital hallway; he was looking for a door, an exit, an escape from the building, from his life too. He crossed rooms and corridors full of dying men from the barricades, revolutionaries and soldiers alike, equal in the face of pain and death. He had seen the blood flowing among corpses and cobblestones, soaking the uniforms, and he had seen the bodies of the young revolutionaries lying side by side. They looked as though they were sleeping. The little boy had shocked him, so young, and already dead. The Javert from before, with his black and white values, had thought that it was better this way, that he died still young and somewhat innocent, even if his eyes had seen the misery and horror of humankind. If he had grown up, he would have become a cut-throat and a thief. But Javert could not bring himself think like that anymore, Valjean’s influence, that convict-saint’s influence, was too strong.

The dirty blond kid, with those grown-up eyes and that childish face, too brave for his own good, could have been his son (a street urchin, fed on the scanty salaries of a police inspector, who often had to decide whether he wanted to stay warm or to eat).

Somehow, the boy reminded Javert of himself as a child: a scrawny gypsy boy with ill-fitting clothing, running along the darkest and most miserable alleys.  
His mother tried to keep him clean, fed, and clothed as best she could, and, in the luckiest days, to assure him a roof on his head. She tried to keep him safe, in the only way she knew, with charms and amulets, which he had disowned as early as possible. They were deceptions, lies for rich people who were desperate enough to believe in anything.  
Sometimes Javert still felt the cold stone against his chest, the chain hanging from his neck. He had worn the pendant beneath his clothes so that the other children wouldn’t tease him.

Javert had left behind his mother’s world full of spirits and stars and his unknown convict father a long time ago, but he could not bring himself to forget them; his mother taught him how to discern constellations and from time to time he cursed in his mother’s language, he knew the basics of reading tarots and hands.  
All of this triggered a flow of bitter memories, the teasings, the beatings, the never-ending discrimination. It was strange and painful.

 

“Inspector!”, a voice made him come back to reality. A young officer, whom he had seen hundreds of times at the station-house, but whose name now he couldn’t remember, was standing at the end of the corridor along which Javert had walked. A man in civilian clothes stood by his side, probably a doctor or a nurse. “Inspector, stop!”. The officer and the physician were near him in what felt like a second, a flash.  
Javert was no longer sure of his surroundings, the pain was coming back, his legs could not bear his weight any longer.

"Inspector, we had feared we wouldn’t find you alive. The letter that you wrote to the Préfecture made us fear the worst, and your coat was found on the bank near the Pont-au-Change, we thought..." babbled the young man, but the Inspector was not listening to him. Javert did not even try to protest against the title, to say that he wasn’t deserving of it, that he had betrayed the Law and everything he had once stood for, instead, he let them drag him away, defeated.

 

He was dead. He thought of himself as dead anyways. He woke up, went to work, went back home, dined, went to bed like he had always done, like the fateful night had not happened, but now everything felt mechanical, lacking of its usual pridefulness and zeal.

The fractures had bound him first to his bed and then to his desk for months.

His life washed him over like the river, he merely existed. He was a statue behind his desk, staring into the void, filling out forms, answering with monosyllables or not answering at all.

Although at first the other officers had admired him because he managed to survive the barricade (no one said a word about how he had ended up in the hospital), now they almost ignored him, he did not greet them anymore.

Javert did not try to kill himself again, he sank into torpor. He had to do something.

Jean Valjean heard someone knocking at the door and thought that Death had come to claim him.

When he opened the door and saw the shadow that had once been the feared Inspector, he realised he had been right. The shadow stared at him, with those eyes which had seen Hell, with his mouth half-opened as he was going to say something but  had stopped himself. Even if Javert still had his long hair, sideburns and height, the man standing in front of Valjean was clearly driven into the deepest despair; he was thinner, paler, and ghostlier than Valjean remembered him, wearing an untidy uniform which had been buttoned hastily. The Inspector’s body was bent under the weight of the torment in his soul.  
  
"In all honesty, Inspector, I had stopped waiting for you"

At the words Javert came back to his senses.  
"I’m not here to arrest you. Actually, I don’t know why I’m here. I should go. Forgive me. I will never come to you again. You will never see me again. Goodbye."

The Inspector was confused, he looked like an animal surrounded by predators, trying to run away, turning frantically in every direction, frightened. Valjean could see sheer panic in his eyes. The lynx had frightened the tiger.

"Inspector, wait. Stop." Valjean grabbed his arms, Javert’s breath hitched at the touch.

"You aren’t able to go anywhere in this condition, now you are going to come in and  calm yourself, alright?"  
Valjean was talking to him with the tone which is usually reserved for children and the ill. It was a tone which he had certainly used with the whore’s daughter - what was her name again? Cosette?

Javert, having nothing to lose, let Valjean guide him inside of the spartan quarters and fell onto an armchair. He couldn’t breathe, the walls were choking him, his clothes were choking him, his skin was choking him. He was trembling and sweating cold sweat, his heart was pounding in his chest. He wished again to throw himself into the Seine.  
  
“Would you like something? Tea, water? Breathe, Javert, you’re as white as a sheet."

A cup of water magically appeared. Did that convict-saint make miracles too? Or was he panicking and simply had not noticed that Valjean had gotten up and gone to the kitchen?  
  
"Forgive my behavior, Mad- Valj-... Monsieur. As I said, it won’t happen again, I’m going, thank you for your kindness"

 "Wait, wait! You didn’t tell me why you’re here". His voice was quiet and kind.

 "I’m here because... I’m here because..." Javert burst into tears. He was surprised, he had not cried since childhood.

"I’m here because you are the only thing that keeps me connected to my old life, despite having been the one who destroyed it... You were the only constant in my life... I’ve lost everything, my life does not make sense, Valjean... I’m not worthy of my job, I’m not worthy of my title, but I keep doing it, I’m dead, the Seine did not kill me, but it did, I’m dead, I’m dead…”

Javert was in tears on his nemesis’s couch, finally letting everything that had been weighing on his soul out in a rush of emotion. It was like a river in flood, it swept him away and left him bewildered. He could no longer control his sobs, the numbness of the past months disappeared.

Valjean let him talk, without pressing questions, although his eyes had widened when Javert mentioned the Seine. He tried to comfort him, touching his arm tentatively, not knowing what else to do.

“You’re alive. You’re alive.” he said, “Breathe, can you feel my fingers on your arm? You’re crying, you must feel something Javert, or you wouldn’t cry. It’s alright, breathe, you’re alive”.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the first fanfiction I wrote in years, and the first ever to be published. Also, English is not my first language.  
> The (quite pretentious) title comes from a hellenistic epigram and I thought it would be fitting to signify Javert's "first death", the one happened in the Seine, with the death of all of his values, and Javert's "second death", his death as a new man, with new values, which will happen later, ~~maybe~~. It's twisted, I know.  
>  The lyrics at the beginning are taken from Sea Wolf's "Winter Windows", and I thought they fitted our dear Inspector well.  
> Partially inspired by my anxiety attacks.  
> Until next time, I hope


End file.
